Can Conservatives and Libertarians Form a Coalition to Save the Constitution? – Part V

Another Difficult Issue – Immigration

First let’s talk about immigration in general. Most people think it should be handled in an orderly way via reasonable laws. I think the radical open border folks are a small minority. They are people who essentially don’t believe in nation states and favor some sort of world government. BTW that is a typical Marxist view of the world.

Libertarians do view immigration favorably, maybe too much so now that we have over 300 million inhabitants in the U. S. They are often accused of being open border supporters by conservatives who are more likely to be concerned about immigration. I can assure you, however, libertarians do believe in the concept of nation states. Unless the U. N. adopted wholeheartedly the limited government philosophy of the Founders of this country and a carbon copy of the U. S. Constitution libertarians would not be remotely interested in even contemplating world government. That isn’t likely with an institution as corrupt as the U. N. with its plethora of factions that do not believe in democracy let alone limited democratic republics.

Immigration is one area where I personally disagree with the Libertarian Party. They are too cavalier regarding this issue. Milton Friedman a libertarian economist pointed out that you can't have a liberal immigration policy and a welfare state. The welfare state has to be dismantled first. Libertarians sometimes forget that Friedman admonishment.

There are of course business people who see immigrants as cheap labor and helpful to their bottom line. Many of these business people hold mostly conservative views on other issues. The collectivists see them as potential voters who will support socialist policies. It’s a complex issue with many viewpoints some of which are very dangerous to the survival of this nation state.

I think we all understand that unrestricted immigration is a national security, economic, and cultural (assimilation) problem. All of us need to understand the practical limits of immigration.

It is also a problem of sheer numbers. Yes, the ideas of Thomas Malthus did not play out as he envisioned them due to the march of technology. However, there really is a practical upper limit on the number of people in a given geographic area. Because it is something that doesn’t get talked about very much let’s now consider that one issue in detail.

Immigration Has Mathematical Limits

There is the matter of the exponential mathematics involved with large influxes of people many of whom have high birth rates at least in the first few generations. Growth and decline in the population of any species is an exponential function. The U.S. now has 300 million plus human inhabitants. Is 500 million OK? 700 million? More?

The problem with exponential growth is that it can sneak up on you. If Pn = P0 * (1 + r)**n where P0 is some starting population, Pn is the population after n years, and r is the growth rate you can creep up on the “knee” of the curve and then suddenly be overwhelmed. This is possible even if r isn’t particularly large. It just takes longer to reach the “knee”. Here is an example of an exponential curve.

Here is a numerical example. If you assume that the growth rate r is 0.02 (2%) and you start with 300 million folks in 25 years you will have 492 million, an increase of 192 million between year 1 and 25. However after 50 years you will have 807 million, an increase of 315 million between year 25 and 50. Between year 50 and 75 the population would jump by 518 million to over 1.3 billion! It just continues to get exponentially worse until something bad happens.

It strikes me as ironic that maybe current economic policies will be that something. No one will want to come to a bankrupt United States. If our current third world banana republic economic policies result in much lower immigration or the opposite emigration it’s a hell of a price to pay to attain manageable population growth! Or as Dirty Harry said “That’s a hell of a price to pay for being stylish.”

If we disregard emigration, the only way this constant increase can change for a given indigenous population is if your growth rate is negative, i.e. there are more deaths than births. You then have a population decreasing exponentially. Emigration of course would accelerate the decline especially if the émigrés were mostly young. This by the way is what is happening with the indigenous populations of Europe and Russia which brings its own set of problems.

There seems to be one possible exception to an increase vs. decrease scenario. Some societies that have a robust economy where the middle class is pretty large seem to be able to stabilize around replacement, i.e. zero growth (r = 0). Our native born population in the U. S. is at about replacement. Japan on the other hand doesn’t seem to have been able to achieve this. The only reason the U.S. and European populations are increasing is because of immigration. In the U. S. the influx comes mostly from south of the border. In Europe it comes from North Africa, the Middle East and Asian countries like Pakistan.

The manner in which populations grow or contract is simple irrefutable mathematics.
Because we have an advanced high tech economic system which includes a high tech agricultural system we have avoided the dire Malthusian predictions. But the objective of this little exercise is to show that at some point we will still reach limits. Those limits are not unimportant.

Yes, we like to think of our country as welcoming immigrants but there are these damn facts that can’t be ignored. You can’t stuff everyone on the planet into North America. Some folks from certain cultures may not assimilate well. Some folks coming into this country may be terrorists. Some immigrants may not have the skill to live and work in an advanced economic system without financial support from the state.

The Bottom Line

OK, why did I bother to explain these points of contention in detail in posts III through V? I think they are the main reasons why cooperation between libertarians and conservatives is often lacking. I wanted to be honest and not ignore the contentious issues. If we gloss over the differences between conservatives and libertarians we will have at best only temporary cooperation and the collectivists will win with their main weapon, cultural Marxism. Keep reminding yourself that collectivists control most of the media, most of the education system and now most of the state and federal governments. Get complacent and you are done and they win.

Conservatives should not underestimate the number of people who are outright libertarians or hold at least some libertarian ideas. A coalition is worth pursuing. My last post in this series will be on the two areas where long term cooperation is vital. One is obviously political cooperation. The other is in the area of education. That’s a tough one since that is a game where the collectivists especially the cultural Marxist variety now hold almost all the high value cards.